"Master. My great master. I knew you would not abandon us."
Bellatrix Lestrange was on her knees, pressing her lips to the hem of Voldemort's robes. Around her, kneeling in the same posture throughout the long gallery at Malfoy Manor, were the Death Eaters retrieved from Azkaban. Some were thinner than they'd been, worn down by years of Dementor proximity. Some looked exactly as they always had, as though Azkaban had simply been a prolonged inconvenience.
Hundreds of Dementors circled the estate. They had blotted out the sun entirely over a radius of several miles, turning midday into a bruised, lightless dusk. The cold that radiated from them was the kind of cold that had nothing to do with weather.
Voldemort looked down at Bellatrix with the unhurried patience of a man who has already decided what he's going to say.
"Bellatrix," he said. "I have a task for you."
She looked up, and her face was the face of someone who has been given something to look forward to. "I am yours to command, my Lord."
"Take one of the Muggle-borns' parents. One of Kevin's family will do — the Granger girl's. Bring them to the Ministry of Magic. Make it loud. Force Kevin and Potter to respond." His voice remained perfectly even. "Make Potter retrieve the prophecy orb from the Department of Mysteries. Our people in the Ministry will ensure your path is clear."
He raised one hand, and the information — location, contacts, timing — transferred directly into her mind. She flinched at the intrusion, then gradually, as it settled, began to smile. The smile widened into something not quite right.
"As you wish, my Lord," she breathed, and laughed.
Christmas break. The corridors were warm with firelight and the particular cheerful noise of students counting down the hours until they could leave.
Sirius and Lupin had arrived a few days prior, spent time with Harry's group, and were preparing to escort everyone home. Lupin's return to the castle had caused a minor scene among his former students — he was mobbed within minutes of stepping through the main doors, surrounded by fifth and sixth-years who either didn't know about his condition or didn't care, all shouting greetings and questions simultaneously. He looked rather overwhelmed and quite genuinely pleased.
Sirius had found his way into a training session with the advanced class and had, by all accounts, thoroughly enjoyed being the villain for two hours.
Now it was the morning of departure, and Hermione was standing in the doorway of the workroom looking at Kevin with the particular expression she wore when she needed him to stop doing whatever he was doing and be somewhere else.
"Kevin. The train."
"One minute."
She came in properly, following his gaze to the window. On the horizon, a white shape was struggling toward them against the wind, listing noticeably to one side.
"That's Hedwig." She peered at it. "Is she — is she carrying something?"
"The amulets for Hermione's parents ran out this morning," Kevin said, already reaching for the window latch. "I sent her last night with replacements and asked her to bring back the old ones. Nearly a quarter-pound each, I know, but she was compensated."
Hermione closed her eyes briefly. "You loaded Harry's owl with dead-weight amulets. Overnight. For hours."
"I gave her an entire basket of treats beforehand. Harry said it was fine. She's fine."
Hedwig arrived in the window looking, in Hermione's objective assessment, like she had opinions about this. She dropped the cloth bag from her beak, ate the offered meat with focused determination, then looked at Kevin, hooted twice in what appeared to be a statement, and bit his hand.
"Ow—"
She spread her wings, satisfied, and departed.
"She bites me after eating my food," Kevin muttered, examining his hand. The skin hadn't broken, but it had been emphatic. "One day I'm going to serve that bird with vegetables."
"You're not. Come on." Hermione grabbed his collar, got him moving, and they joined the general exodus toward the station.
The train was already filling by the time they arrived. Harry and the others had claimed a compartment, and Sirius was wedged in among them like a large, slightly shabby relative who was trying very hard not to look as happy as he was. Kevin and Hermione took the next compartment, alone, as the last stragglers found their seats and the platform noise gradually thinned.
"You know," Hermione said, settling back against him as the train gave its first preliminary lurch, "since we're going home anyway — couldn't we just have carried the amulet back ourselves and swapped it in person?"
"It ran out this morning. By the time we get in, it'll be dark. And we're probably going to the Order of the Phoenix first. Your parents won't have a gap in coverage." His hand moved slowly through her hair. "I'd rather not leave them unprotected for half a day, even in daylight."
She didn't argue. She tilted her head back to look at him, reading his face, then turned back to the window.
"Hm."
She wriggled closer and closed her eyes. The familiar rhythm of the train, the warm pressure of Kevin's arm around her shoulders, the pale winter light sliding across the compartment — it was the nicest part of the term, she'd always thought. The journey home.
She was nearly asleep when the sky changed.
It happened fast. The pale grey outside darkened, then darkened again, and then the cold came.
Not winter cold. Something else. Something that reached through the glass and settled in the chest like a stone dropped into still water.
Hermione pulled herself closer, eyes still closed, trying to attribute it to the heating charms failing. But Kevin had already moved. She felt the shift in his posture — the stillness that meant paying attention.
She opened her eyes.
He was on his feet. Wand in one hand, crowbar in the other. Fog curled from his breath in the suddenly freezing air.
And then came the screech of metal on metal as the Hogwarts Express braked hard.
"Harry — protect everyone."
Kevin's voice cut through the train compartments via the Amplification Charm — sharp, clear, no room for misunderstanding. He didn't wait for a response. His goldfish Patronus exploded outward in a blinding white ring, scattering the swarm of shadows pressing against the windows, buying thirty seconds.
Then he Apparated.
The crack of his departure hung in the suddenly still air of the compartment.
Harry hit the corridor running from one direction, Hermione and Lupin from the other. They nearly collided in the middle.
"Where did he—"
"Gone." Hermione's hand was on her bracelet, face pale, something in her eyes that was very close to fear. "He's moving away. Fast." She looked toward the front of the train, and then beyond it — south, toward London. Toward home.
"Oh," she said quietly, understanding.
There was no time to say more. Through the windows on both sides, the Dementors were regrouping. The brief reprieve Kevin's Patronus had bought was already ending.
"Right." Harry's voice steadied. He turned and started issuing instructions with the clipped efficiency of someone who'd been preparing for exactly this kind of situation. "Two people to the rear cars. Two to the front. Herd everyone toward the centre carriages. Anyone who can cast a Patronus — outside, now."
Orders spread, students moved, and Sirius vaulted through the nearest window into the dark without a second's hesitation.
This was what all those training sessions had been building toward.
The Grangers' street looked like a warzone.
Buildings burned on both sides. A section of fencing had been blasted into the road. The five Death Eaters in the centre of it all were staring at the couple backed against the far wall with increasingly frustrated expressions.
They couldn't get close. Kevin's amulets had triggered fully — a shimmering barrier that deflected every curse cleanly, leaving the Grangers singed-free at its centre. The protective charms operated in layers. The Death Eaters had now tried, by Bellatrix's rough count, everything short of an Unforgivable, and the barrier was still intact.
"Incompetent idiots," she snarled as she dropped from the air, two other Death Eaters behind her. She didn't break stride. Three consecutive blasting curses hit the shield in rapid succession.
Cracks appeared.
The Grangers held onto each other. The barrier was failing. Hermione's mother closed her eyes.
The cold hit first.
Not Dementor cold — something different. Something that made every Death Eater in the street go instinctively still. A pressure change. The sky turning, as though something very large was paying attention.
Bellatrix had time to snap up an Iron Armour Charm and take two steps backward.
It was not enough.
The claw came out of the sky like a wrecking ball wrapped in thunder. It shredded her Iron Armour as though it were tissue paper, sent her flying thirty metres sideways and through the brick wall of a house across the street. Structural damage. She did not get up.
The Death Eaters who remained turned to face the source of the impact.
Three metres at the shoulder. Six metres from nose to tail. White fur, dark stripe markings, and wrapped around every inch of it a living storm — clouds churning tight against the body, lightning detonating in continuous bursts, the sky above it growling in low steady resonance as though the atmosphere itself was in sympathy with the creature.
The tiger looked at them.
Its roar was not a sound. It was a pressure wave — a thunderclap at point-blank range that hit every chest simultaneously and sent bodies staggering backward, the weakest of them dropping to their knees with their hands over their ears, screaming.
The tiger moved.
It struck three Death Eaters in a single sweep — a massive forepaw trailing shadow and lightning — and they were gone. The remaining two had half a second.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The Killing Curse hit the tiger's shoulder and passed straight through it, as though the tiger were made of weather rather than flesh.
The Death Eater stared.
Heat at the back of his neck. He turned.
Where the tiger had been standing was an afterimage, slowly fading.
The tiger was already behind him.
He flew.
The fire burning in the street had extinguished itself. The lightning dissipated. The storm clouds dissolved back into ordinary London sky, taking their sound and pressure and terrible cold with them.
What remained was an enormous white cat — much reduced — padding quietly across the rubble toward the corner where the Grangers had been standing.
They hadn't moved. They stood frozen against the wall, arms around each other, staring at the creature moving toward them with the expressions of people who have just witnessed something that has permanently revised their understanding of what the world contains.
The barrier charm was still up. The tiger pressed a paw to it and passed through without resistance — it apparently considered it a door — and came to stand in front of them. Close. Examining them carefully. Looking for injuries.
Finding none, it sat.
Mr. Granger had been in emergency situations before — not this kind, but situations where clarity of mind mattered. He gently moved his wife slightly behind him and did not reach for the tiger, but held very still and looked it in the eyes.
Those eyes looked back at him with unmistakable intelligence.
The tiger glanced out at the street — the ruin, the scattered rubble, the bodies — with an expression that resolved, slowly, into something like relief. Then it settled its haunches fully onto the pavement, arranged itself into a patient posture, and waited.
Two minutes later, Aurors arrived in waves.
They surveyed the scene in silence for a long moment.
The tiger stood, and pointed — one deliberate raise of a forepaw — at the house across the street with the Bellatrix-shaped hole in the wall.
Thunder sounded, once, in a clear sky.
The tiger was gone.